I Never Had It Made (7 page)

Rae, Mr. Rickey, and Clyde Sukeforth were all great supporters during this period. Rae never missed watching a practice period, and Mr. Rickey became personally involved in helping me. He would stand by the base line and mumble instructions to me.

“Be more daring,” he would say.

“Give it all you've got when you run. Gamble. Take a bigger lead.”

While Mr. Rickey pushed me, Clyde showed his support and concern by massaging my morale and trying to get me to loosen up.

My supporters were helped by two glorious events that acted like tonic. The first was during the initial Dodgers-Royals game. On the eve of that game I experienced all kinds of mental torture. The grapevine had it that I would not be allowed to play; that the local authorities had been putting terrific pressure on Mr. Rickey. What I didn't know was that the shoe was on the other foot. The Dodger boss was the one exerting the pressure. He had done a fantastic job of persuading, bullying, lecturing, and pulling strings behind the scenes.

I had steeled myself for jeers and taunts and insulting outbursts. To my relief, when I walked out on that field, I heard nothing but a few weak and scattered boos. Holding down second, I felt a mighty surge of confidence and power. I picked up a smoking grounder that seemed certain to be a hit. Pivoting, I made an accurate throw, forcing the runner at second. My arm was in great shape and so were my legs. I had speed to spare.

That game seemed to be a turning point. The next few days in practice and intrasquad play, I began to show significant improvement. I was elated at the happiness my performance brought to Rachel and Mr. Rickey. I got my first base hit, and Rae was delighted. She had made some friends in the Agricul-ture Department at Bethune-Cookman College, which was close to where we lived. To celebrate, she got special permission from the Harrises to cook a victory dinner of chicken and fresh vegetables given her by her friends at Bethune. It was one of the few times she could cook for me in those days and I really enjoyed it. Our two newspaper friends, Wendell Smith and Billy Rowe of the Pittsburgh
Courier,
were our guests for dinner.

The second inspiring event occurred during the opening game of International League season in Jersey City. It was a major game and Clay Hopper had gambled on me by letting me hold down second base. Through the second inning, we kept the Jersey City team scoreless. My big moment came in our half of the third when with two men on base, I swung and connected. It felt so good I could tell it was a beauty. The ball flew 340 feet over the left field fence. I had delivered my first home run in organized baseball. Through all the cheering, my thoughts went to Rachel, and I knew she shared my joy. This was the day the dam burst between me and my teammates. Northerners and Southerners alike, they let me know how much they appreciated the way I had come through.

All these good and positive things generated a tremendous kind of power and drive inside of me. My next time at bat in the Jersey City game, I laid a bunt down the third base line. I beat it out for a hit. I got the sign to steal second, got a good jump on the pitcher, and made it with ease. When the game ended, I had four hits: a home run and three singles, and I had two stolen bases. I knew what it was that day to hear the ear-shattering roar of the crowd and know it was for me. I began to really believe one of Mr. Rickey's predictions. Color didn't matter to fans if the black man was winner.

My happiness about the three victorious games in Jersey City was soured when we got to Baltimore. There were two racist types sitting behind Rae. As soon as we emerged on the field, they began screaming all the typical phrases such as “nigger son of a bitch.” Soon insults were coming from all over the stands. For me on the field it was not as bad as it was for Rae, forced to sit in the midst of the hostile spectators. It was almost impossible for her to keep her temper, but her dignity was more important to her than descending to the level of those ignorant bigots.

On the positive side Rae and I noticed in Florida and in cities like Jersey City that black fans were beginning to turn out in unprecedented numbers despite extremely adverse conditions. Fortunately, there were no racial incidents of consequence. In Southern cities, including Baltimore, segregated seating may have held down racial tension, but it was grossly unfair to blacks who had to take bleachers and outfield seats. But they turned out anyway. Their presence, their cheers, their pride, all came through to me and I knew they were counting on me to make it. It put a heavy burden of responsibility on me, but it was a glorious challenge. On the good days the cries of approval made me feel ten feet tall, but my mistakes, no matter how small, plunged me into deep depression. I guess black, as well as white, fans recognized this, and that is why they gave me that extra support I needed so badly. This was the first time the black fan market had been exploited, and the black turnout was making it clear that baseball could be made even more profitable if the game became integrated.

After Jersey City and Baltimore, the Royals moved to Mon-treal. It was a fantastic experience. One sportswriter later commented, “For Jackie Robinson and the city of Montreal, it was love at first sight.” He was right. After the rejections, unpleasantness, and uncertainties, it was encouraging to find an atmosphere of complete acceptance and something approaching adulation. One of the reasons for the reception we received in Montreal was that people there were proud of the team that bore their city's name.

The people of Montreal were warm and wonderful to us. We rented a pretty apartment in the French-Canadian sector. Our neighbors and everyone we encountered were so attentive and kind to us that we had very little privacy. We were stared at on the street, but the stares were friendly. Kids trailed along behind us, an adoring retinue. To add to our happiness, Rachel shyly told me that very soon there were going to be three of us. There was only one sour note for me at that time. Johnny Wright, the black pitcher Mr. Rickey had signed on, was dropped from the club.

Although he never did anything overtly negative, I felt that Manager Clay Hopper had never really accepted me. He was careful to be courteous, but prejudice against the Negro was deeply ingrained in him. Much, much later in my career, after I had left the Montreal club, the depths of Hopper's bigotry were revealed to me. Very early during my first Montreal season, Mr. Rickey and Hopper had been standing together watching the team work out, when I made an unusually tricky play.

Mr. Rickey said to Hopper that the play I had just executed was “superhuman.”

Hopper, astonished, asked Mr. Rickey, “Do you really think a nigger's a human being?” Mr. Rickey was furious, but he made a successful effort to restrain himself and he told me why.

“I saw that this Mississippi-born man was sincere, that he meant what he said; that his attitude of regarding the Negro as a subhuman was part of his heritage; that here was a man who had practically nursed race prejudice at his mother's breast,” Mr. Rickey said. “So I decided to ignore the question.”

That was one of the incidents I didn't know about, but there were others I was very well aware of because I was right in the center of them. By the time we arrived in Montreal, I had received a classic education in how it felt to be the object of bitter hatred.

Back in spring training I had had some particularly bad experiences. A game with the Jersey City Giants had been scheduled to take place in Jacksonville. But when game time came we were confronted with a padlocked ball park and told the game had been called off. The reason was obvious, and later I learned that my participation would have violated city ordinances.

In De Land, Florida, they announced that we couldn't play a game because the stadium lights weren't working. What this had to do with the fact that the game was to be played in the daytime, no one bothered to explain.

When the Royals came up against Indianapolis in Sanford, the game had begun and the crowd in the ball park had surprised us all by not registering any objection to my playing second base. In fact, the fans rewarded me with a burst of enthusiastic cheers when I slid home early in the game. I was feeling just fine about that until I got back to the dugout. Hopper came over to me and said Wright and I would have to be taken out of the game. He said a policeman had insisted he had to enforce the law that said interracial athletic competition was forbidden.

During the regular season similar incidents occurred over and over again. Surprisingly enough, it was during a game in Syracuse, New York, that I felt the most racial heat. The problem there wasn't from the fans as much as it was from the members of the Syracuse team. During the entire game they taunted me for being black. One of the Syracuse team threw a live, black cat out of the dugout, yelling loudly, “Hey, Jackie, there's your cousin.”

The umpire had to call time until the frightened cat had been carried off the field. Following this incident, I doubled down the left field line, and when the next player singled to center, I scored. Passing the Syracuse dugout, I shouted, “I guess my cousin's pretty happy now.”

The toll that incidents like these took was greater than I realized. I was overestimating my stamina and underestimating the beating I was taking. I couldn't sleep and often I couldn't eat. Rachel was worried, and we sought the advice of a doctor who was afraid I was going to have a nervous breakdown. He advised me to take a brief rest.

Doctor's orders or not, I just couldn't keep my mind off baseball. Winning the pennant was not a problem. It was virtually in the bag. But the trouble was that if I won the batting crown, people could say afterward that I had stayed out to protect my average. I just had to go back. The rest lasted exactly one day.

At the end of that first season, I did emerge as the league's top batter, and when we returned to play Baltimore again, there were no more taunts and epithets. Instead, I got a big standing ovation after I stole home in one of the games.

Our team won the pennant. They also won the International League play-offs that were held every year among the top four minor league teams. The Louisville Colonels won top honors in their league, the American Association. After that the Royals and Louisville would play off in the crucial little world series. The three games held in Louisville were vital baseball-wise and extremely significant racially. Louisville turned out to be the most critical test of my ability to handle abuse. In a quiet but firm way Louisville was as rigidly segregationist as any city in the Deep South. The tension was terrible, and I was greeted with some of the worst vituperation I had yet experienced. The Louisville club owners had moved to meet anticipated racial trouble by setting a black attendance quota. Many more than the prescribed number of blacks wanted to come to the game since it would be the first instance of interracial competition in baseball in the city's history. As white fans surged through the turnstiles unhampered, numbers of blacks, some of whom had come long distances, were standing outside the gates, unable to gain admittance.

I had been in a deep funk for a few days before the game. Although I didn't expect the atmosphere to be nearly as bad as it turned out to be, I knew that bad trouble lay ahead. To make matters worse I had descended into one of those deadly slumps which are the despair of any player who has ever been afflicted by them. I was playing terrible ball in Louisville. In all three games I managed one hit out of eleven tries. The worse I played, the more vicious that howling mob in the stands became. I had been booed pretty soundly before, but nothing like this. A torrent of mass hatred burst from the stands with virtually every move I made.

“Hey, black boy, go on back to Canada—and stay,” a fan yelled.

“Yeah,” another one screamed, “and take all your nigger-loving friends with you.”

I couldn't hit my stride. With a sick heart, damp hands, a sweaty brow, and nerves on edge, I saw my team go down to defeat in two of the three games. To make up for this, we would have to win three out of the four final games to be played in Montreal. When we arrived in that city, we discovered that the Canadians were up in arms over the way I had been treated. Greeting us warmly, they let us know how they felt. They displayed their resentment against Louisville and their loyalty to us on the first day of our return to play the final games by letting loose an avalanche of boos against the Louisville players the minute they came on the field. All through that first game, they booed every time a Louisville player came out of the dugout. It was difficult to be sure how I felt. I didn't approve of this kind of retaliation, but I felt a jubilant sense of gratitude for the way the Canadians expressed their feelings. When fans go to bat for you like that, you feel it would be easy to play for them forever.

I guess the rest of the team felt that way, too. At any rate, we played as if we did. When we came on the field, our loyal Canadians did everything but break the stands down. Louisville showed some spunk as the game opened, jumping to a 2-0 lead in the first inning and going ahead 4-0 by the fifth. After that, the game changed. The confidence and love of those fans acted like a tonic to our team. In a classically hard-fought game, we won the game and tied up the series. We ended up winning three straight to win the championship. My slump had disappeared, and I finished the series hitting .400 and scoring the winning run in the final game.

I was thrilled but I was also in a hurry. I had a reservation on a plane to Detroit to take off on a barnstorming tour. The tour, starting in Detroit, was to last a month. I rushed through the happy Montreal crowds swarming over the field, got into the clubhouse, but before I could shower and dress, an usher came in to tell me the fans were still waiting to tell me good-bye. He neglected to mention that there were thousands of them. They grabbed me, they slapped my back. They hugged me. Women kissed me. Kids grinned and crowded around me. Men took me, along with Curt Davis and Clay Hopper, on their shoulders and went around the field, singing and shouting. I finally broke away, showered and dressed, and came out to find thousands still waiting. I managed to plunge through the crowd and was picked up by a private car as I ran down the street. A sportswriter, Sam Martin, described that scene succinctly. He wrote, “It was probably the only day in history that a black man ran from a white mob with love instead of lynching on its mind.”